By Andrew Bansal
Long Island’s death metal flag bearers Suffocation are ready to release their seventh studio album ‘Pinnacle Of Bedlam’, on February 15th in Europe and February 19th in the US via Nuclear Blast Records. The album marks the return of drummer Dave Culross, who is featuring on a Suffocation album for the first time in almost 15 years. A couple of nights ago, I had a fairly entertaining chat with bassist Derek Boyer. We discussed the new album and line up change, of course, and besides, we talked about the band’s touring plans, Derek’s double duties with Suffocation and Decrepit Birth, the Long Island Music Hall Of Fame, his stage moves, and more. Enjoy the conversation below, and visit Suffocation on their facebook and twitter pages for up-to-date info.
The new album is coming out next month. Is it going to be like what Suffocation is usually known for, in terms of the music itself?
I think this album is going to better than a couple of the most recent albums. I think it’s really fast, it’s really intense, it’s brutal. It’s like a complete package. The performances went down good, the songwriting is good. We’re real happy with it as a band. I think the listener will be happy too, and I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. It’s going to be really sick!
That sounds awesome. This album features the return of your old drummer Dave. How did that come about?
Well you know, everyone has different ideas of what they should do with their lives and their time, so some of us are like, not married, no children type of scenarios while some of the other guys are doing the family thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, and we encourage everybody to do whatever feels right for them. So basically, Mike [Smith] was wanting to may be tour less. By no means he was saying that he’s not going to play drums, but he wanted to tour less so that he would be home with his family more. For the rest of us, we didn’t really want to tour less. If anything, we wanted to tour more, to get out and support the album and to be out there. So, it was just one of those things where Mike said doing the family thing was more important for him, and we don’t blame him at all. When you’re raising a child and stuff like that, you’d probably rather be with your child than sitting in an airport somewhere. But the timing worked out just great with Dave. He is from Rochester but lives down in Long Island where we live, and it was just a perfect transition. He was just kind of in the right place at the right time for us. He was ready to go and we grabbed him. He just instantly got back in it and felt right at home, having been in the same place in the past. Everything worked out perfectly.
So as you said, instead of touring less you wanted to tour more. For the album cycle of the previous album ‘Blood Oath’, were you satisfied with the amount of touring you did?
No, we could have definitely toured more for Blood Oath. It was kind of in our transitional period. Mike had the child, and we could have probably done more, but for him it was just the right amount or too much. With having a child, you don’t want to be away. But yeah, I feel like in the past we should have toured more to support our albums. I guess ‘Blood Oath’ did OK. It’s kind of a soft one because it was our first effort with Nuclear Blast, and we didn’t really tour so much for it. I think we’ll be able to do more for Pinnacle and hopefully Nuclear Blast will be pleased with us.
It’s been four years since that album, man. These days that’s a pretty long time between albums. I guess it’s a good thing, in a way, because it makes the fans more excited for the new one.
Yeah, I guess so, but also yeah it is too long. Two years is probably like the ideal album cycle. We’ve had Pinnacle written for two years and it’s been like one of those things where we said, let’s try again to write until we get to a point where everybody’s comfortable with the material. Terrance and I have been sitting on that material for two years, and the fact that all of my files say ‘2010’ and we recorded it in 2012, and then nothing comes out till 2013, it’s such a tricky game. We were busy with doing some touring for Blood Oath, also getting the arrangements all proper, so you know it’s kind of time consuming but it shouldn’t take more than two years between each album. But again, with the circumstances we were going through with Mike, it was a standstill. We were still involved with a couple of aspects. Not the end of the world, though. Everybody does the right thing according to them, so I think we’re in good shape now but we could have definitely toured more (laughs).
Absolutely! So, almost a couple of years ago you also rejoined Decrepit Birth. How’s it working out for you working with both bands?
I was in Decrepit Birth in 2002-03, and rejoined them. They’re great guys. It worked out perfect for me. I rejoined that band recently because we [Suffocation] weren’t touring that much. There was so much free time between the tours, I would rather be playing with Decrepit Birth than sitting at home doing nothing. So it’s one of those things where Suffocation weren’t doing a lot of touring and I was talking to Matt Sotelo and told him that I really love the new Decrepit Birth record [Polarity]. I did the first record with them “… And Time Begins” and then Matt pretty much put the next two records together himself. So when I started talking to him about how much I liked this stuff, he was saying, ‘We’d love to have you back! And I decided that well, we’re not touring right now so I might as well go and do it with Decrepit. Playing with both bands is super fun. It’s a little tedious though, and sometimes you’ve got to be in two places at one time. Like I had to play a show in upstate New York with Suffocation, and then rush down to the international airport and fly out to Puerto Rico to play with Decrepit Birth! It could have been a lot worse, so basically it got to a point where if I was going to do both, we needed to schedule accordingly because both bands are active. It’s not like one band isn’t working at all. So it’s tough trying to juggle both bands, but definitely doable.
Have you played shows with both bands on the bill, or not yet?
Decrepit Birth and Suffocation have shared the stage quite a bit, but I haven’t done double duty.
May be on the upcoming album cycle you might have to!
(Laughs) I hope not. I just don’t know whether the people would get bored of me or not. I guess sometimes you see a guy on stage, then he comes off the stage and goes on stage again. I’m modest, so I don’t know if people would want to see that much of me (laughs).
Coming back to Suffocation, recently the band was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall Of Fame. What was your reaction to that? I’m sure it must have felt pretty awesome.
Oh, it was super cool to be recognized on a totally different level. Salt-N-Pepa was there being inducted and getting a performance, and Taylor Dayne, and really wild stuff that’s been around forever. So basically, Suffocation having a 20-plus year old career made sense for the committee. They’re looking around the Long Island area, and they’re going, ‘Wow, Suffocation has been around forever and may be they deserve to be in the hall of fame.’ It was really an honor, sitting there right next to Salt-N-Pepa, Charlie Daniels and a bunch of weird shit, it was really cool. It was super awesome to see the industry on a different level and still be recognized as a death metal band.
Coming to your own musicianship, you have certain stage moves when you’re performing. What’s the reason for that? Do you feel like you’ve got to give a visual performance in addition to your bass playing?
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, because as a young kid going to crazy shows or whatever, you see bands that play really well and then you see bands that flipped out, like the guy that was headbanging like crazy. There’s a fine line at making sure that you’re music is coming across but on the other hand it’s supposed to be entertainment. Supposing someone comes to the show and they have no idea what they’re expecting, and then you play really well but you’re just standing there while doing it, they’d go, ‘Oh yeah, that band, they played really well.’ But if you flip out and still play well, then they go, ‘Wow, that was entertaining! So that’s the main goal for us, to put on a show and also to keep our cool. But as I said, there’s a fine line. If you just flip out the whole time, you’ll probably mess up your parts, so you can’t do that (laughs). But you also can’t just stand there either because you want people to remember you, go check out your stuff online and buy a CD or something like that. You want to impress upon them that it’s entertainment, not just someone standing around and playing a guitar (laughs).
Right, you seem to do it well because I know some chicks who go to Suffocation shows mainly to see your performance.
(Laughs) That’s funny!
And I’m not even kidding. I actually know some friends who are like that. I’m glad you’re able to bring an audience to a Suffocation show through your own individual showmanship.
Wow, that’s wild! I never really even considered that. I always just thought I was going to do what feels right and have fun with it. But that’s flattering. That’s great. You just made my day (laughs).
So, in terms of your stage setup, when you play for Suffocation and Decrepit, is there any different in the settings or do you just play the same way?
I think for the most part, I’m always going for a similar objective, which is to get something that cuts through and has a good, real tight bottom end. When you first pick up a bass guitar, you may not necessarily know what it’s supposed to do or what it can do, because with these instruments you can really get a ton of different results out of them depending on how you attack it. So for Decrepit Birth and for Suffocation, for me it’s the same goal, real tight bottom end with a real good drive or attack, and some type of presence. For the most part it’s a similar setup but for Decrepit it’s tuned slightly higher so that the resonance of the strings is going to hit the speakers differently.
You mentioned the low end. When you record albums, are you usually satisfied with the production and mixing value? Is it able to capture your low end the same way?
That’s a tough one, basically when I’m on stage I have usually between 8 and 16 10-inch speakers. So when you’re looking at 80 inches of speaker area or 160 inches of speaker area, you’ve got to imagine that this thing is hitting 2400 Watts of power. So it’s really hard to get that feeling when you get into your little Apple headphones or your little car stereo. I mean, I know you can get really crazy car steroes but for the most part, you get into someone’s car and put the CD in, you can tell there’s some bass in there but it’s nothing like what I do on a stage. That’s why it’s so much more fun to play live than to go in the studio. But at the same time, it’s a necessary evil and you’ve got to enjoy both. I think we’re translating at the highest level so far. With the new album, the sound and the bass response is pretty accurate for a little CD compared to a big stage. So it’s pretty close.
That’s very interesting, man. So finally, how soon can we expect Suffocation to start touring? I don’t think any US dates have been announced yet?
No, but we’re ready to go. The management and booking agents are doing the negotiations. It’s great to sit back on the sidelines while all this happens, but then we don’t always know what’s going on. To the best of my knowledge, March-April time we’ll be out in North America and then April-May we’ll be out in Europe, or May-June I guess, something like that. Then we have some stuff in South America tentatively, and basically after that we’re looking to go back over to Europe for festival stuff and then Asia-Australia territory, and then another North American tour to wrap up the year. So, a bunch of stuff is in the works, and a lot of it is on the table, but as far as confirmation, nothing right this second. This is a very loose, tentative routing.
Right, well that’s awesome and I’m glad that your year has almost been panned out already. It was good talking to you, man! Thanks for your time and all the best with everything.
Awesome, thank you so much! I’ll talk to you guys soon, and I hope everyone enjoys the record!
Related: ‘Pinnacle Of Bedlam’ Album Review